Tuesday, November 27, 2012

This is your doing, Mogs.

Like a good butthurt fanboy, I took to the comments section and fired off a diatribe - mostly standing atop Mogs' sage wisdom last week - and I blathered on for so long I figured "well heck, this is a blog post."

The gist of Schreier's article is that the platform is too expensive and doesn't have enough good games that aren't ports. Well...

* * *

Sony's platforms have always been the pricy ones, but I fail to see having some seriously sweet ports like Metal Gear Solid HD, (the oh-my-God-gorgeous) Rayman Origins, the upcoming Muramasa: The Demon Blade and yes, P4G as a negative. Those are all games I want to carry around in my pocket.

Sure, Persona 4 Golden is the best all-round game on the system - it's a phenomenally polished, refined and accomplished version of one of (if not the) best turn-based RPGs of all time - but that doesn't make Gravity Rush any less awesome.

Also, I really enjoyed Golden Abyss. It felt like a proper Uncharted to me - though the way they shoehorned in touch controls reeked of the silly sixaxis crap at the dawn of the current gen - and that's what this whole discussion echoes to me. A friend pointed out a disturbing similarity the other day, and he's right:

It's 2012 and "the Vita's got no games." Once upon a time it was 2008 and "the PS3's got no games." What these platforms also have in common is a company behind them which wields the largest and arguably most accomplished first-party development community in the world.

I too feel spikes of fear when I see news that the 3DS outsold the Vita 47 to 1 in Japan a few weeks ago - fear that third party devs may abandon the system for the greener pastures of more popular platforms - but I'm not too concerned about having awesome games to play on my Vita. If Sony have anything, it's talented first-party devs - and a pub fund that gets great-looking stuff like Guacamelee in the pipeline.

Now, if only they would ink a deal with Klei Entertainment and give me someShank and Mark of the Ninja on the go... ignoring the Muramasa port, we've already got a new game from Vanillaware on the way, after all...

1 comment:

Well, I'm glad you put that much weight behind what I said, and I hope that as time goes on, my common sense stance will sort of take to the hivemind as it were. Because I'm not saying anything outrageous, and if anything, I'm of the few that -aren't-.

The Vita hasn't been out, in any region for a year yet. What doesn't generally get a lot of good, worthwhile content within a year? Like, everything, but especially Video Game things. Even the 3DS, or I should perhaps say especially the 3DS didn't see super strong support out the gate or even in its first year. For all the bluster about Nintendo's First Party, the very first Nintendo IP game that came out for it that wasn't a launch game or a literal direct port from the Nintendo 64 was Mario Kart 7 (if that counts) and it came out eight months after the 3DS was released. And then nothing again until March of this year when Kid Icarus came out.

In roughly that same amount of time, just look how many first party games (and more importantly, New IPs) came out of Sony for the Vita. It's not comparable at all. So whatever the Vita's problem is, it's certainly not games. After the inevitable price drop that everything gets (that will be titled a 'desperation move by Sony', just watch) people will be far more open to it and what's there will be ready to welcome folks in. Just as Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was there to surprise many a late-comer, Gravity Rush, at the very least, will be there for everyone who shows up late to the party. And, as with the PS3, it'll just go from there.

CHANCE...

...is actually named David.

This is where I write about video games. Beyond the simple pleasure of it, I hope to use this place as a bit of a mental gym to re-develop my writing style - something I seem to have misplaced around the turn of the century.

It will also serve as a personal blog, but for the most part if you enjoy discussion of gaming news, independent reviews and pointless musings, you have come to precisely the right place.

It's my custom to do at least one post per day - but whether it ends up being ten posts of breaking news and a review, or one post complaining about how I have a tummy ache is not set in stone.